


The Great Escape

by Bacner



Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Comrades in Arms, Gen, Hellfire Club, Inner Circle - Freeform, Lorna is the boss, Mutant Underground, Post-Calamity, Spoilers, dream talks, relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-27 22:53:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17775761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bacner/pseuds/Bacner
Summary: Esme had a Very Cunning Plan...





	The Great Escape

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: all characters here belong to their owners.

…And so it happened, as Esme was walking through the Inner Circle’s HQ to execute her Very Cunning Plan, she came across Andy. Normally, that was not too surprising – the Inner Circle’s HQ building was actually smaller than how it looked and it just so happened that Esme and Andy ran into each other more often than not – but in this case, it was in the HQ’s cafeteria, and Lorna was with him.

Now, to prevent any misunderstandings it should be noted that while Andy was resting with his head on Lorna’s lap, both were fully clothed, and Esme – who was actually the more experienced one here – could tell that no sexual hijinks had been involved here; rather, both Andy and Polaris were genuinely drunk, and with a good reason too – Sage had been their friend, after all.

Again, Esme was on a personal mission to execute her Very Cunning Plan, where time was liter-ally off the essence, but, well, it was Andy, and besides – Sage was her friend too, actually, plus Esme was feeling atypically nervous for her, so, perhaps to get some sort of a confidence boost or to procrastinate, she reach out mentally to his mind and went in.

/ / /

Lauren Strucker, Andy’s estranged sister – or maybe he was the estranged one, it was hard to tell – was not having a good night. More precisely, she was not getting a good night’s sleep, because of her dream – it was the one that she shared with Andy, that of a building on an abandoned street (it was probably abandoned, since there was not any other people around, other than the two of them), where Andy was usually waiting – on the roof.

Common sense suggested that Lauren turned around and left, but on the other hand, Lauren was always the one ready for a good ‘confrontation’, so she opened the door and went up the stairs to the rooftop.

Sure enough, Andy was there, but unlike their usual routine, he wasn’t waiting for her; rather, he was just sitting there, looking lost and morose and so much the old Andy that Lauren exhaled and said “Hi!” instead.

That proved to be a mistake, as Andy shifted and fixed her with a very hostile glare. “And what are you doing here?” he asked.

“Excuse me?” Lauren immediately snapped back into her confrontational mode. “What am I doing here? Andy-“

“Sage is dead,” Andy said morosely, not looking Lauren right in the eye. “Ms. Reeva has killed her.”

“Oh.” Lauren blinked, as she belatedly remembered that a number of other mutants had left the Mutant Underground for the Inner Circle alongside Andy and Lorna in the past. “Er, um, Clarice is probably dead too?” she replied, her mouth acting faster than her brain, which was telling Lauren that that wasn’t really a good comeback, or the most appropriate one either.

“That’s nice,” came the reply, “now why don’t you make like a tree and leave?”

There was a pause as both of the siblings stared at Esme who was looking at Lauren with genuine hostility in her eyes, for it was Esme who had spoken.

“What are you doing here?” Lauren demanded – she never liked the other mutant even before the entire Inner Circle infiltration of the Mutant Underground.

“This is the collective dream conscious,” Esme replied haughtily, sounding more like her usual self this time, “so ‘here’ is a lot of people. Leave.”

“Make me!” Lauren snapped, as she punched the other woman, confident that she could defeat Esme in a physical fight.

Or not, for as Lauren drew back her smarting hand, Esme shifted from her regular self into some sort of an armored knight warrior…made out of diamond, of all things. Indeed, while most of the new Esme was somewhat opaque, Lauren, for one, could see the diamond heart in the other woman’s chest – and she felt somewhat weird, as if she saw something private…

Of course, considering that the new Esme grabbed her by the throat and picked Lauren off her feet, Lauren did not really have time or the presence of mind to think about that in detail: rather, she was flailing and choking for air.

“Esme,” Andy said quietly from behind Lauren, “put her down.”

“I don’t know,” Esme said with a genuine pout on her new, diamond face. “Maybe I just destroy her mind and put Sage’s mind into her body instead.”

“Esme,” Andy grabbed the aforementioned mutant by arm, and from what Lauren could see, not only was he bigger and taller than Esme was now, he also was not diamond, unlike Esme, again. Rather, he seemed to have turned into some sort of an iron knight – or maybe a titanium one. “Aside from the fact that what you’re saying is really not funny or even appropriate, you cannot do that-“

“Actually, I can, but only because I have made preparations long before today,” Esme admitted. “I know that I don’t have the best track record with you, but please believe me-“

“Fine, I will,” Andy exhaled with a far deeper sigh than it was usual for him. “But you still hadn’t answered my question-“

“Yes, well, to do that, we need to wake up,” Esme admitted.

“All right, let’s,” Andy admitted, and-

-and suddenly Lauren found herself gasping for air and wide-awake.

“Are you all right?” Caitlin asked her daughter.

“No! Stupid titanium Andy and his stupid diamond girlfriend shoved me out of their dream!” Lauren snapped.

“…” Caitlin wisely said nothing – clearly, her daughter had a lot on her mind. When she – and Reed – learned that Sage might be dead, they grew even quieter – Sage was not missed much in the Mutant Underground…but still she was.

/ / /

“Oof!” Both Andy and Esme woke up from their journey in the ‘collective dream conscious’ loudly enough to wake Lorna as well.

“And what is going on here?” she spoke, eyeing Esme with far more hostility than the usual, but then again, she was justified. 

“Esme’s going to revive Sage,” Andy told the older mutant matter-of-factly. 

“Try again,” the look in Lorna’s eyes turned glacial and would have made a polar bear shiver. 

“Sage was one of us – she was right there, alongside me and my sister on many missions, not to mention that she had revitalized our software and the like a lot,” Esme spoke quietly, but passionately and without flinching. “So I, for one, have kind of forged a mental link with her – the same that we all share-“

“Meaning what?” Lorna’s voice was still firm, but the glacier in her eyes has thawed some, as she and Andy followed Esme down some HQ corridor.

“Meaning that when Reeva went to kill Sage by destroying her brain, I sort of pulled Sage out of her brain into mine,” Esme turned red. “It’s only a short-term solution at best – long-term I just go insane instead, so I need to put Sage – back into her body or elsewhere.”

“Let’s go with option A first,” Andy muttered. “Sage in Lauren’s body may sound fun, but my parents would now the difference in a snap, and then-“

“Sage could just kill them-“

“Esme, they are our parents; is the Inner Circle’s solution to everything be murder?”

“…Yes, pretty much-“

Esme did not finish, as Andy just hugged her.

“You know, I’m the older and the tough one,” she said to no one in particular. “Couldn’t we met just when you were older, so that we would have it here and now-“

“Ahem,” Lorna coughed, fully aware that hers and Marcos’ love lives began fully when they were around Andy’s current age, but proportionally? Andy still had the more sheltered upbringing out of them, so-

“Right,” Esme and Andy disentangled from each other. “Where to now?”

“The Inner Circle’s morgue.”

/ / /

The Inner Circle’s morgue looked pretty much like any other morgue that Lorna had been into, and sadly, that had been quite a few – the Mutant Underground missions sometimes took very weird turns. In this case, though, the only corpse present so far was that of Sage, and right now? It was very well preserved.

“Right,” Esme took one good look at their deceased sister-in-arms, took a breath and made some internal choice. “Andy, take my hand – I must warn you, it won’t be the most pleasant feeling-“ 

Andy already took it, so Esme grabbed Sage’s cold stiff one, and her eyes lit up with a really vivid blue glow. Actually – Lorna frowned – Esme’s entire body-, and Andy’s-  
As abruptly as she had started, Esme stopped and collapsed, followed by Andy.

And then they vomited. On some level, it was actually funny, the two of them were reminiscent of high school or college students overdoing a bender, but then Sage opened her eyes, sat up, and vomited as well.

“What- what did you do?” she gasped between the dry heaves.

“Restored your body through with almost only mental energy,” Esme replied, as she and Andy began to recover. “I don’t know how much more do you have – months, years, or less, but you’re alive. The debt is paid.”

“Yes, thank you Esme,” Sage managed a sad smile of a grimace. “Now what?”

“We can’t run,” Lorna said miserably, “we still don’t know what Reeva’s master plan is!”

“I do,” Esme shot back, “so does Sage… and does that mean that you’re the one who’s been spying on us…for the Mutant Underground…”

For once in her life, Lorna could not quite look Esme right in the eye. Andy, on the other hand, could.

“Esme,” he said gently, “according to Lauren, Clarice has died because of- the Inner Circle’s meddling. Please do not be Lauren and go righteous on our faces-“

“Fine,” Esme looked away first. “So, now what?”

“Well, since you already know Reeva’s master plan-“

“She shared it with you from the start, that was never a secret-“

“You know the darker, dirtier details of it,” Lauren gave the obvious statement its’ due, “so could you and Sage come with us and help us help the rest of the team bring Reeva down? It would be much appreciated-“

“Fine,” Esme made a half-hearted show of being conflicted. “Sage?”

“I’m with you,” the techno-mutant wrapped her arms around herself and shivered – but to be honest, it was cold in the room. “Lorna, you’re in charge?”

“John’s in charge of the Underground these days-“

“Oh God, it’s doomed,” Sage half-sobbed, only half-joking.

“Yes, well, shall we go and help him,” Lorna said, crossly. “I’m sure that John does fine, especially when he doesn’t head-butts enemy cars to stop them.”

“He does what?!”

“Long story, I’ll explain on the way,” Lorna replied, and she and Sage, (followed, naturally, by Esme and Andy), left the Inner Circle HQ building.


End file.
